Support and General Use > Hardware

H140 - do SSD drives slow down over time?

(1/3) > >>

sl33py:
Hi all,

Researching my options in terms of hard drive replacement. A lot of the info that was once out there is now lost in the void (misticriver). I've narrowed my choices to either buying a direct swap PATA drive, or using mSATA with the appropriate adaptors. I've updated my bootloader to 7pre4.

I've heard it mentioned a few times that SSDs slow down over time as the drive is filled up, and every time data is deleted.

My typical usage would be to fill the drive nearly completely, listen to that music for a few few months, then delete either half the music, or all of it, refill it, then repeat.

Will an SSD suit me, or should I choose one of the larger 1.8 inch ZIF/PATA drives with actual platters?

Thanks for any advice in advance,
Ben

saratoga:
Write performance will decrease over time but write performance doesn't matter for an mp3 player.

sl33py:
Hmm. I've read a couple of accounts now where the drive slows down during playback, making the music stutter.

But also, my typical use is load the player with music and listen for a couple of months. Wipe half (or maybe more) of the music and reload with different music (in fact I wrote a java app to randomise the selection each time). Then repeat.

I have enough music that even with a 120GB drive and all my music @ 320kbps MP3, I'll still reload now and then because it won't all fit.

I wonder how one can 'reset' the drive? I've read that a reformat won't do the job (not sure why though).

saratoga:
Your player buffers several songs ahead of the one currently playing. Disk performance is irrelevant.

polluxx2006:
I had a similar experience with my 128 GB SSD (Kingspec) in the irver H120 - maybe not with mp3 files, but with flac...
from what I read, SSD storage has some sort of mappers that indicate the "positions" of data in the memory cells.

The more you CHANGE the content, the longer it takes to access data that is stored in that overwritten cells.
Maybe this is comparable with fragmentation we had to deal with on specific OS years ago.. ;)
Well, modern OS obviously can deal with this or "remap" - please don't ask me how...

Anyway, our "little" RB-firmware cannot do this, so the only way to speed up the SSD is refreshing the cells.
(like setting it to factory defaults)
I think a low level format could be the solution. For example, there is a certain disk tool for Linux (it is included in the Parted Magic distro, so I tried it with that one),
but ONLY if you connect it via IDE natively, NOT USB... then I bought myself an IDE adapter, but haven't taken my SSD out of the iriver yet.

Stilll I HOPE that there is another way to do it... or all the above is non-sense (oh and please don't pick on me in that case ;) )
I wish it were but the behaviour of my SSD tells a different story :(

My conclusion: use an HDD for changing content (80GB is quite cheap on e**y) and
use the SSD only with "growing content" that won't hardly be changed.

I hope that other users here will share their experience with this phenomenon.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page